Hours into the evening, and Ethan stood by the counter with his lips parted in a wide yawn, his arms stretched to display his fatigue as he looked towards the door. He walked towards the door, and he grabbed the poster that hung the "Open" sign and flipped it the other way round, displaying the "closed" sign to those outside.
On the counter was his headphone whose volume was loud enough to overhear the song that played within. It was a slowed tempo rendition of the famous John Legend's You and I which Ethan hummed and nodded his head to as he mopped the tiled floor of the diner.
At the moment he was done, he threw his backpack over his shoulders, and wore the headphone over his neck as he and Michael exited the diner.
"What's up between you and that... lady?" Michael broke the silence as they both walked together on the pedestrian walkway.
"What lady?" Ethan asked as he turned towards his friend with hands dipped in his pockets. The loud drifting sound of a car's wheels had caught their attention immediately, causing them both to look to the side and observe what carnage occurred beside them.
"The one you made cappuccino for? Without the machine?" Michael asked again.
"Oh! Scarlett" he had whispered the last words, inaudible to the hearing of his friend as a smile lit up his face. The thoughts of her had finally hit him hard, correlating to the very song which he heard through his headphones.
"Yeah! That one! You seem quite intrigued whenever she's around" Michael answered.
"Maybe I am!" He responded. He wasn't just intrigued, he was obsessed with her.
His fantasy of her had grown to where he could go extra miles to win her attention, and as sudden as his interest in her was piqued, it was safe to say that it was scaling just the way he had envisioned it to be.
"And you know the good thing, she keeps coming to the diner every single day. She never misses it for once" Ethan spoke the words lightly with an expression in his tone capable of making the other invidious.
The other looked at him with a squeezed face, rolling his eyes before he then said, "Whatever man! Don't just shoot yourself in the foot"
As they walked a few steps further, Ethan abruptly halted on his tracks. His eyes rattled in his sockets as though he had suspected something foul, but at the same time, too enthralling to resist.
He walked a few steps backwards, and turned around to the wall where a poster was stamped. It was a bright one, of which the well lit streetlights had aided in its clarity.
His attention was mostly captured by the two knight pieces of the chess game which faced each other, and a red star sign of which the middle was inscribed a huge sum of money which caused his eyes to be widened beyond the usual.
Quickly he placed his hands on the poster, and without a second thought, he ripped it off the wall.
"Hey! What was that for?" Michael squealed the words as he approached Ethan. He looked left and right, hoping that none would see what he had done.
"The Arcadia chess tournament, a contest of Kings and Queens. Live at the Arcadia town Park, fifteenth of September at six pm. Grand prize of a thousand dollars?" He read the writeup on the poster, but squealed the last five words with an excitement in his spirit that almost made him leap to the heavens.
"Oh I'm keeping this one for myself!" Ethan said as he wrapped it and dipped it into his pockets.
"And what if another person had done that, would you have known about it?" Michael questioned with shrugged shoulders, and hands placed on his waist.
"Well, that's fate's way of eliminating any other threat. The thousand dollars is mine!" He scoffed and walked away, leaving the other to stare at him with a heave of a heavy sigh.
As soon as Ethan Grey arrived home, he greeted his mother, and ran through the flight of stairs to his room where he shut the door, and scouted through his room as though he searched for something.
He headed towards the piles of books which were stacked above his wardrobe. He stood on a chair, and stretched his hands to the very one which had crossed his mind, grinning hard until his fingers touched and pulled down.
"Now there you are..." He whispered the words with a smile seated on his face, blowing off the dust from the book before he used his hands to clean the book cover.
He held the fourth written edition of Jeremy Silman's chess mastery through imbalance, How to Reassess your chess. He smiled even broader as he jumped down the chair and walked over to his bed.
For long, Scarlett had been his keen interest, the very thought which occupied his mind and caused him to smile even when it seemed as though there wasn't a reason to. But there he was, seated on his bed, flipping through the pages of the hefty book with another that caused a greater exhilaration inside of him.
His greater joy was reminiscing the moment his late father had handed the book over to him, along with a chess board which was well arranged on the table which was just a few inches away from his bed.
He flipped through the pages, unto the table of contents where he trailed his fingers to the chapter that intrigued him the most. He flipped the pages the more until it arrived at the page whose title was tagged, "Talk to the board and It Will Talk to you"
As soon as he read the title of the page, he stood off his bed again, and sat close to the table where the chess board was kept. With every glance he took at the book, he took the same at the board, and then moved some pieces across the board. Those were his actions all through that night.